1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates generally to establishing wireless network communication, and, more particularly, to methods for automatically and accurately establishing wireless network communication between devices.
2. Brief Discussion of the Related Art
Wireless network technology has become pervasive in a wide variety of devices, such as notebook computers, cellular phones, smart phones and PDAs. Built-in networking capabilities can be used to establish connection and execute related wireless operations between devices. For example, devices can exchange contact information, such as digital business cards, wirelessly.
IR communication is a conventional method for transferring digital information between devices. When IR communication is used between two or more devices, the number of transactions grows geometrically as the number of devices involved increases. The relationship between the number of IR transactions and the number of devices involved is summarized as follow:
n=m×(m−1)n, in which n is the number of IR transactions, and m is the number of devices involved. This geometric growth is illustrated in table 1.
TABLE 1Number of devicesNumber of IR transactions22364125206308561213220380
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating data flows based on conventional IR communication. As shown in FIG. 1, if five devices (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) exchange data, the number of data transactions that must be initiated grows to 20 transactions. IR communication becomes impractical as the number of involved devices grows.
Radio Frequency (RF) technologies, such as Bluetooth, allow multiple devices to communicate without requiring line-of-sight alignment. For this reason, problems associated with IR communication can be substantially eliminated. RF technologies, however, have other problems. Misdetection of devices belonging to different exchange groups may occur, if the challenge friends-or-foes identification is not addressed.
Additionally, complex and time-consuming operational steps are typically required. First, a RF networking capability of a device is manually turned on. Then, available network devices are explored, and the correct devices among all visible devices on the network are selected for connection. Finally, wireless data exchange is performed, and, as the last step, the RF networking capability is turned off when the wireless data exchange is completed. The learning curve to perform the aforementioned operations may seem insurmountable to many users. As a result, using conventional RF technologies to exchange data is still not widely practiced.